Differentiate requirements, risks, constraints and assumptions

29 Nov 2017

During design workshops, we gather not only requirements, but also constraints which limit our choices. After inital workshops, we should building our design. Initially during this process we will need to make a number of assumptions and uncover potential risks. Assumptions need to be validated and risks raised throughout the... more

Gather and analyze use cases

22 Nov 2017

When first reading the title of this objective it can seem a bit hard to view how it will be on the exam. After input from others, it appears that the key is analyze a given use case. A Brief on Use Cases The purpose of a use case is... more

As part of the VCAP7-CMA Design study guide, I have put together a use case which will be used to provide context when addressing each of the exam objectives. The study guide can be found Here Use Case Mega-Awesome Transit have identified a need to increase the reliability and reduce... more

Gather and analyze business requirements

21 Nov 2017

Holding workshops with business stakeholders is the primary method of gathering business requirements. The goal of requirement gathering is to understand what the business is trying to acheive. Requirement workshops may also provide the constraints which we must work within. As a consultant conducting design workshops, it is important to... more

I recently updated my Ubuntu install from 17.04 to 17.10, which meant the kernel was updated to 4.13. As a result, I was no longer able to run VMs with VMware Workstation. I found some posts regarding the error and that it was due to a change in the way... more

Today I came across the need to use PowerCLI on a computer without internet access. Thankfully I found this blog post detailing the steps that I needed to perform, however not all was rainbows and unicorns. I quickly ran aground when attempting to import the modules. After a bit of research,... more

vRA uses Custom properties to help define parameters and the behaviour of requests. In the previous post CHEF: vRA Integration, Property Groups and Blueprints we used custom properties to define the properties of our Chef deployment. In this post, we look at using custom properties to assign the node environment. The Chef... more

The Chef plugin provides some workflows to help with getting the vRA integration up and running with minimal effort. I would suggest treating them as samples to build functionality on top of. There are some limitations from the default state which might not provide sufficient flexibility for production usage. Setting up... more

Chef Integration with vRA: Part1 In the previous Chef integration with vRA post, we covered how to install the Chef plugin for vRO. In this post, we will look at provided workflows used to install the Chef Client on Windows and Linux VMs. The workflows are called by the Event... more

The Chef agent is installed on a VM after the VM has been deployed and completed the ‘Machine Building’ stage of deployment. This is achieved by creating an event subscription through vRAs Event Broker Service (EBS). When an event triggers an EBS subscription, vRA communicates with vRO causing a workflow... more

Building use cases to learn new products allows for new knowledge to be applied and persist much longer. Learning new topics and maintaining that knowledge is a skill. By dedicating time to understanding a range to topics, you start to understand how to learn and become more efficient. Watching videos,... more

One of the challenges many of us come across when taking a more automated approach to infrastructure is the sheer number of tools available. This is especially true when you come from a one tool for multiple roles environment. Every week, there appears to be another tool for you to... more

Terraform is an awesome tool used to manage infrastructure using the Infrastructure as Code philosophy. Modules called Providers enable Terraform to communicate with a number of different cloud providers. Post deployment tasks are performed through a separate set of modules called ‘Provisioners’;. A provisioner is used to execute commands locally... more

Configuration management systems are used to deploy and ensure a standard environmental state. You might use a configuration manager to ensure that a file exists, or a certain setting is always applied to a system. As your IT infrastructure grows or becomes more distributed ensuring a consistent state becomes more... more

While at Interop ITX 2017, I met with Eric Pulvino from Cumulus Networks and learnt a bit about where Cumulus was heading and what’s new. One of the topics that got my attention was using a CICD pipeline for end to end testing of network configuration changes. Cumulus Linux in a... more